AI data center developer Crusoe has expanded its strategic partnership with battery energy storage firm Redwood Materials.
The expansion follows the successful deployment of a 12MW/63MWh microgrid system at a Crusoe Spark modular data center. The expansion will see Crusoe expand the deployment from four to 24 Crusoe Spark data centers.
The microgrid system, which was launched in June of last year, consists of solar and repurposed electric vehicle batteries. According to the companies, the system delivered 99.2 percent operational availability over seven months of continuous operation with minimal unplanned downtime.
“Since launch, the Redwood Energy and Crusoe system has demonstrated that repurposed EV batteries can reliably power high-performance compute workloads at scale,” said JB Straubel, founder and CEO of Redwood Materials. “Achieving 99.2 percent uptime validated our approach and gave us the confidence to expand compute capacity nearly sevenfold on the same energy infrastructure. Together with Crusoe, we’re demonstrating a faster, more flexible, and lower-cost way to build and power AI infrastructure.”
“By expanding our work with Redwood Energy to 20MW, we are proving that the ‘AI factory’ of the future can be quickly scaled through the convergence of innovative energy solutions and modular infrastructure deployment,” said Cully Cavness, co-founder, president, and chief strategy officer of Crusoe. “This expansion allows us to quickly and predictably deliver high-performance Crusoe Cloud compute capacity to our customers through Crusoe Spark modular data centers.”
Crusoe Spark is a modular data center solution that integrates data center critical infrastructure, including cooling, power, and GPU-ready racks, into a single unit, optimized for AI compute. The system is designed for rapid deployments and can be scaled due to its modular nature.
The expansion of the Redwood partnership was one of two deals Cruseo made within the energy storage market this week. The company also inked an agreement with US energy storage firm Form Energy for up to 12GWh of multi-day energy storage systems to support the AI data center sector, beginning in 2027.
Form Energy is based in Somerville, Massachusetts, and is a developer of iron-air batteries.
